I’m in BBC mode – as per usual. Must be something about working at the weekend.

And for some reason hearing the rhythmic beat of the news sting as I turned up for another 7am start this morning, reminded me of a track which I’ve been meaning to put up here for a while.

I’ve always thought that the beeb should release the music that they use for all their News Idents on CD (including all the rather wonderful local regional variations that you get around the country), in all its different formats and mixes so that you can then fiddle around with it to your hearts content, or maybe so that the completely sad amongst us can use it for their own productions or spoof news broadcasts.

So I was quite thrilled the other day when my friend Richard said to me “Oh.. you’ll like this” and proceeded to play to me a track called “Turn on the News” by DJ Nite. [4Mb MP3 download]

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Back in my dim and distant teenage years of raving, there was a happy hardcore track that a pirate raido station we listened to would always play that had the news theme of the time (though, thinking, it might have been ITV, cos it had the “bongs” of Big Ben in it..) Would have been around 1992ish..

Oh, and Geoff.. having problems with typing comments in here using IE. The blue bar down the side of your blog (has the iThankyou image in it) runs OVER the comments box, so I can’t see what I’m typing on the right hand side of it!

Fimbo, yes – that’ll be because you’re using Internet Explorer 6 which doesn’t confirm to CSS2.0 properly! Either switch to Opera, Netscape or Firefox, or maybe write an email to Bill Gates, and tell him to hurry up with IE7! ðŸ˜‰

It’s a sign of immense arrogance on behalf of any website to insist that that the reader changes their browsing experience. Particularly if their choice of browser is the one used by the vast majority.

It is the webmaster’s duty to ensure their site is compatible to most users, but it is impossible to cater for everybody, whether in terms of screen resolution, colour depth or otherwise. Some people still don’t have Java-compatible browsers!

The vast majority do still use IE6. Here are my browser stats from houseofsteel for one day about a week ago:

I’ve just checked over all of Geoff’s pages and am unable to find any guarantees of (a) legibility (b) correct spelling (c) correct grammar. Nor am I able to find any legislation that states that reading Geoff’s pages is compulsory…Nor (as a private individual) is Geoff beholden to W3C accessibility standards. It’s Geoff’s world – if you don’t like it, invent your own.

Absolutely correct, Anthony. That is because he is a decent chap, and he cares (often far more than he really should do). He does it because he wants to, not because he has to. And he does not deserve to be called immensly arrogant.

Believe it or not, most people don’t care what browser they are using, and if a webpage doesn’t work for them, they will blame the website, not their browser. Firefox advocates are a technically aware, vocal minority. Telling people how they should browse the web is just wrong.

Ian, I am in no position to disagree with your views on what is right and wrong on web technicallities, but going into somebodies web space and personally insulting them as you did in post 12 is simple old fashioned bad manners.

Excuse me whilst I put on the anorak here, but does anyone have a copy minus the woman singing over?

Also I seem to remember this piece of music, or variations thereof, were used on some BBC News featurette with Huw Edwards giving a tour around the (then) new BBC News centre at TVC and I remember one scene of him sitting in the studio and playing around with Anna Ford’s makeup case on one of the computers under the desk. So it’s definately around without the woman warbling over the top, but whether it’s part of the old branding package produced for the BBC national news I don’t know.

How about they release it and some other BBC music on some giveaway CD for TV Centre tours? Would be a nice touch for those tourists who come so far to visit the UK and it’d be nice for them to take a piece of the BBC away with them. Just an idea! ðŸ™‚

BBC World (the commerial funded international 24-hour news channel) did release their ident music in 2000, in response to the music’s popularity.

“This music was originally designed to play in the background over and over again, ideally not annoying too many viewers in the process. So it came as a really nice surprise when people around the globe actually noticed it, and wanted to know where they could buy it.. In response, BBC World asked me to create some special tracks featuring the music for this CD.”
— David Lowie

You can actually still buy that CD online (It’s only £3.36 each) on the composer’s website above!

To Amy:
In the U.K., people commemorate “Remembrance Day” on the Sunday closest to the 11th November (“Remembrance Sunday”)
I’m a Vancouverite myself, so couple years ago, I too was confused when they commemorated the end of WWI after the actual 11/11, but I soon found out the reason. Hope that helps!

Scroll down to “Bezoekers per week (laatste 20 weken)”; it’s the graph with the big spike right in the middle.
For some reason, I got over 1200 visitors that week, and other weeks I’ve been getting about 300-400. What happened then that would have given me that many hits? Was I featured in a newspaper or magazine? Did a well-known site link to me?

Apparently, the composer of the tune (David Lowe) is also known as Touch And Go, the guy who did the superlative “Would you go to bed with me?” dance track. Trumpets are always required on a dance track. Marvellous.

My stats are in Dutch, and can be changed to English (although the helpful “Help” explanations can’t) by clicking the flag at the top. My hosting is the free Tesco.net webspace, which does the job nicely, but it would be nicer to have ASP capability, etc. Thing is, though, I can’t afford another tenner a month!! For the sake of my paltry site, it’s just not worth it.

I use Firefox on MY laptop and computer, but I now have a work laptop, so use that mainly. And being a work laptop in the NHS, the buggers won’t let me have the admin password to be able to install Firefox.

Oooh.. wierd.. the window opened in 800×600, so following advice above, I just increased to full size (1024 etc), and the text box was nice and small. As soon as I started typing, it increased to slightly wider than the screen. That was interesting.

Wasn’t meant as a dig by the way Geoff, just thought you’d be interested in the strange happenings!